Nature Of The SOSTAC® Planning Model
PR Smith developed SOSTAC® in the 1990s and over the years it has proven to be among the best, when it comes to making your marketing strategies. It provides a simple, yet powerful framework to create a business plan that is easy to understand and follow through completion.
Situation Analysis
The first S in the name of the planning model stands for Situation and is meant to evaluate the state of your business the market trends and your competitors. Having a general idea about your performance is another important part of this step, as well as knowing the needs of your audience and if you meet them.
Objectives
Objectives is the O in the SOSTAC® and is the phase of the plan during which you set the targets that you want to hit. Number of sales, the general satisfaction of your customers and the methods that you are going to be using to reach your audience are among the primary concerns that this step of SOSTAC® is aiming to address. The uniqueness of your business and the ability to pleasantly surprise your customers are also planned here as well as quantifying your efficiency gains.
Strategy
Strategy is important when it comes to any type of planning and this is what the second S in SOSTAC® stands for. How can you reach the audience that you are aiming for? What is the audience that you are aiming for? How do you build the relationship with your audience? Those are just part of the matters addressed in this phase.
Tactics
When you have the strategy in place, it’s important to list the specific actions. The Tactics part of the SOSTAC® is meant to provide a more detailed image of your strategy. Many people confuse strategy and tactics and the main distinction is the level of detail. The strategy is the overall how (e.g. in your marketing plan your strategy might be to use social media, or paid advertising or SEO). If you’ve chosen SEO as your strategy, the tactics will be the subsections that will help you reach the set objectives. The actions might include local SEO, technical SEO, conversion rate optimisation, etc.
Actions
Then comes the Actions phase where you start figuring out the plan of action for all of the other phases to be put to their maximum productivity. You need to have all the resources needed and leave them to be managed in capable hands. Making sure the people that you have entrusted the various task with are well prepared to carry them out is vital. Depending on your product external agencies are also often part of the bigger picture.
Control
Control is probably the most important part, because it is where you are going to know if all other phases are working in the best interest of your business. If something is not working as it it supposed to this is the phase that will help you refine it. Tracking performance and reports are major part of keeping your business successful. Knowing whether your customers are happy with you, are you getting the amount of sales that you would like to for the amount of effort and resources you spend and other valuable information is what this phase is responsible for and is directly linked with the Objective, Strategy and Tactics phases of the SOSTAC® model.
SOSTAC® is being used in many companies in the world as it is one of the simplest ways to plan out your business and it works for almost any type of them out there.
If you want to find out more about , head to www.SOSTAC.org or buy the PR Smith’s SOSTAC® Guide To Your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan (2018).